By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 15, 2005
3:07 PM
KHARTOUM, Sudan, April 14 -- Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick pressed the Sudanese government Thursday to take specific steps that would demonstrate it is cooperating to halt the violence in its Darfur region, including allowing NATO or the U.S. military to assist in a rapid expansion of an African-led monitoring force.
Zoellick said Sudanese officials gave encouraging answers -- as they have frequently during a two-year crisis that has driven nearly 1.9 million people from their homes -- but he said he was looking for immediate results.
"The responses that I've been given are good responses," Zoellick said, "but this has been a problem that left tens of thousands of people dying, so we have to solve the problem."
The conflict in Darfur broke out in early 2003 when two largely black African rebel groups attacked police stations and military outposts to protest what they called discrimination by the mostly Arab governing elite. The United Nations and human rights groups accuse the government of arming and supporting militiamen, called the Janjaweed, to crush the rebellion, and of bombing villages where rebel supporters were said to be hiding.
Aid groups have complained they have faced intimidation from government and sometimes rebel forces, as well as a shortage of funds. The World Food Program this month announced it will be forced to cut rations for more than a million people beginning in May.
Zoellick's trip here represents the administration's most sustained high-level engagement on the issue since former secretary of state Colin L. Powell demanded that Sudanese officials "act now" during a brief visit last June. At the time, people made homeless by the conflict and living in squalid camps totaled 1.2 million.
Earlier this week, Zoellick attended an international conference in Oslo that secured $4.5 billion in pledges to help the government in Khartoum and rebels in southern Sudan implement a peace accord. That accord is aimed at ending a two-decade civil war -- unrelated to the Darfur conflict -- between Sudan's Islamic north and the Christian and animist south. On Friday, he will travel to both southern Sudan and Darfur, where he will the visit one of the camps housing victims of the violence.
Zoellick has backed up his push by suggesting that as much as $2 billion in promised U.S. aid to help implement the North-South peace accord could be imperiled if Khartoum did not address the separate crisis in Darfur, which is located in western Sudan. The threat was also designed to persuade John Garang, the charismatic southern rebel leader who stands to gain a leading role in the new government, to get involved in Darfur -- or risk losing the money as well.
Adding to the pressure, the United Nations Security Council last month adopted a resolution authorizing the International Criminal Court to prosecute Sudanese war criminals for atrocities committed in Darfur. The combination of factors has convinced U.S. officials that the time may be ripe for a fundamental shift in Sudan's behavior, particularly because the North-South peace accord combines the lure of billions of dollars in aid with a regional framework for avoiding the break-up of Sudan along regional and ethnic lines.
With the government frequently maintaining it is the victim of events beyond its control, Zoellick said he suggested that Sudan demonstrate its sincerity by focusing on specific steps, such as quickly issuing visas to aid workers, facilitating the expansion of the monitoring force established by the African Union (AU) and quickly investigating violent incidents. Currently, nearly 2,300 AU forces patrol an area the size of France, and later this year the union is expected to approve an increase to 7,700.
Zoellick said he told officials that if Sudan could not adequately police Darfur, the government should welcome the introduction of forces to maintain law and order.
"It's Sudan's country," Zoellick told a news conference. "Countries are held responsible for actions in their territory."
But there was also a sense of déjà vu about the Sudanese response. Sudan's first vice president, Ali Uthman Muhammad Taha, told reporters before meeting Zoellick, "We are working diligently to stop the violence" and "get Darfur back to normalcy." And during a lengthy session with Zoellick, Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail also handed him a hand-written action plan for resolving Darfur and returning people to their lands. But Taha has made similar remarks before -- and, during Powell's visit 10 months ago, Ismail announced that Sudan and the United States had agreed on an action plan on Darfur.
Zoellick is exploring whether a small force of NATO, European or U.S. forces could provide logistical support, such as C-130 cargo flights, to help expand the AU force. The Sudanese government has resented the presence of the troops, which have a weak official mandate, but U.S. officials maintain they have helped calm areas where they are deployed.
Estimates of the death toll in the conflict vary widely. The United Nations calculates that as many as 70,000 displaced Darfur residents died between March and October 2004. Some outside analysts suggest that more than 400,000 have been killed or perished from disease or malnutrition since the violence began.
Zoellick said the State Department estimated the number of dead at between 60,000 and 160,000.
"There are numbers that are higher, and what I would emphasize in this is that nobody knows for sure," he said.